


93 percent stardust

by Anonymous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, I'm really sorry Shiro & Keith, M/M, Open Ending, Tragedy, no happy ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:23:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16425845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Keith Kogane is in love.(An AU where the Kerberos mission returns safe home, and in some ways that changes everything, but in some ways it doesn't change anything at all.)





	93 percent stardust

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> This is my first Voltron fanfic, and my first fanfic ever written in English. At the moment I don't have a beta, so please be patient if you find mistakes. Regarding this fic: I saw zuspacey's art about Keith leaving Earth (and Shiro) and I just _had_ to write this. Apologies for all the angst and the sad ending, but i had to.

 

 

Keith Kogane was in love. Most people who knew him would be surprised that he could recognize his feelings, but he had years of experience in repressing his feelings to not know what was the feelings that lived wrapped around his heart.

The feelings he felt were like tendrils of light, trying to fill the dark holes in his heart. He knew perfectly well who was the cause of that light, and it still amazed him.

Keith Kogane was in love, as was Takashi Shirogane. But. (There’s always a but.) Takashi Shirogane wasn’t in love with him, that would’ve been too easy. Shiro, as everyone called him, was in love with his almost fiancé, Adam. Sure, they had a bad break-up a few years earlier, when Shiro had piloted the Kerberos mission, but soon after he returned they got together again.

Keith knew he was in love the day Shiro left for the mission, and he had vowed to himself that he'd confess to Shiro as soon as he returned. Two years, and the background static of his heart was his love for Shiro.

Fate, that meddling bitch, had other plans for him. No love confessions, no happy ending. When Shiro returned he was halfway across the world, and when he got back Shiro was already back in a relationship with Adam. That was the end of his hopes, and soon after he left the Garrison. Sure, he and Shiro were still friends, but they never were as close as before. He went back to the desert shack, to it's dusty floorboards and tin roof. He went back to sell the only home he ever knew (he was not allowed to call Shiro _his_ home, he never was) but somehow he settled in. He got to know again the creaking of the stairs, the moody stove, the bird that insisted on trilling every morning on the tree near the house, and he started searching for _something_. He wasn't sure what was telling him to search, but he knew, he just _knew_ he had something to find. ( _It was like an itch between his shoulder blades, an itch that never went away. He was missing something, something important, something_ vital.)

In the third month of his hopeless search, he cracked open the crates his father left behind, the ones that he had received when he turned eighteen, but had never bothered to open. From the crates emerged a new world, no, a new _universe._ In the crates he found his mother's story. His mother. _Krolia._ He also found something even more precious, a contact beam to her.

Fate, that meddling bitch, had other plans for him though. The beam didn't contact his mother, but someone named Kolivan.

And then. And then. Shiro, always Shiro. His relationship with Adam isn’t doing great, but they’re planning to get married anyway. Shiro asks him to be his best man. He thinks _if I have to be the best man at my true love’s wedding, I think I’ll kill myself._ He says yes, because what else he can say? He knows how important it is to Shiro. _As if it isn’t important to me too._ He swears that he won’t be on Earth by the time the wedding comes around. He just _can’t_ watch Shiro marry someone else, he can’t. If his life were a Hallmark movie that would’ve been the moment to convince Shiro to leave Adam, but his life is not a movie, there’s no happy ending for him. He just smiles until it hurts and then smiles some more. What else to do?

Somehow, _somehow,_ he finds a cave with a giant robot lion. A blue lion. What has become his life, a joke?

He tells Kolivan about it, obviously, because it's that kind of thing that he asked reports on.

Three weeks before the wedding he gets the communication that he’s leaving the planet to go with the blue lion to a place called Marmora in two quintants. (It doesn’t matter where the fuck that is, anywhere else is better than the wedding of one Takashi Shirogane and one Adam Warren).

He writes a letter, of course he does. His life is a sappy movie without the happy ending, of course there's a letter. (To call it letter is reductive, though. The first three pages are a letter for Shiro, the remaining four pages are his will, because he knows he won't ever return to Earth. He has nothing there, maybe he never had.)

He takes with him all the things that could connect him to aliens, and that means all his mother’s stuff. The only thing not exactly necessary that he takes with him is the red leather jacket he found between his father's things. His life can be slimmed down to a half empty duffel bag and three crates that aren’t really his. He hesitates over a photo of Shiro, but after hours of pondering he decides against tucking it in the duffel bag. He won’t ever forget how Shiro looks, not even on his deathbed. He knows his smile better than his own, could sketch his hair or eyes or hands in his sleep. He tucks his memories in the tendrils of light that envelope his heart and he says goodbye to all he ever knew.

His letter for Shiro will remain on the table for two days. Keith Kogane will be declared dead seven years after the evening on which Shiro found the letter. At the exact same moment he’s declared dead, he strikes a fatal blow to the Galra empire. ( _If only Shiro could see me now…_ )

Keith leaves Earth with a sad smile and a whispered goodbye. _It was never meant to be, wasn't it? I hope we'll see each other in our next lives, Shiro. May the fates be kinder to us._

 

* * *

 

Shiro doesn't know why Keith isn’t answering to his texts and calls. He knows that Keith’s getting more and more antsy as the wedding approaches, but… He finds Keith’s phone and his letter on the table. As soon as he sees the two innocent objects laying there, he knows something is wrong, _very_ wrong. And then. _And then._ He reads the letter, of course he does. It has his name written on the envelope, he reads it right there and right then. And he _breaks._ Keith left him. Sure, he never said that outright, but Shiro's always been good at reading between the lines. Keith is declared missing, presumably dead and no one's looking for him (not anymore). The remaining weeks until the wedding go by in a blur, the only clear moment being the one when he says _I do_ to the wrong man during an enormous wedding that’s just plain _wrong._ He finds himself married, living in a house that he hates, with a person he barely knows.

He never stops searching for Keith, but it's almost as if he disappeared into thin air. The hoverbike is still in the shed Keith built, all his clothes are in the wardrobe. The only thing he took with him was that knife of his, the one his mother left him (all he had of her). Adam and he grow distant ( _as if they had been close before_ ) and, four years after Keith’s disappearance (almost, almost to the day) Adam leaves him.

Takashi Shirogane is the best pilot of his generation. He is the one piloting the Aletheia mission, the first contact between humans and an alien species, nine years later. The aliens, hailing from a planet called Arus, tell the humans about the Galra Wars, and how a young Galra ended them. No one notices the perplexing familiarity of the savior’s picture to one Keith Kogane, declared dead two years earlier (if they do, it's considered a coincidence,  because the savior has the typical lavender hue and the markings of a Galra).

 

* * *

 

 

On the other side of the universe, on a small hunk of rock torn between two black holes and a giant superstar, a young man ( _even if he feels so,_ so _old_ ) is watching the stars and thinking of his beloved. He misses him, he has ever since he left Earth ( _he gave his heart away, he buried it in the soft earth under the blooms of a cherry tree, he'll never get it back_ ). No one knows exactly what to do now that the Empire’s rule is over. _Rest,_ whispers a voice that is still very familiar to him. _Rest and then find me,_ whispers Shiro’s voice.

 _What should I do?_ he asks the stars, his only companions.

The stars remain silent, and just continue their silent, slow dance.


End file.
